Boy Scout Event, 4/1/2011

posted Apr 8, 2011, 6:08 PM by Jim Twellman

Well, we had a great outing for the scouts. Chuck Simms was there ahead of me, I got turned around a bit in the park. We had two 8" SCTs, one on Saturn and one on the Orion nebula, and my xt6 swinging to different targets. Eventually Chuck's scope was moving around too.

We had about 40 or 50, maybe fifteen of which were elementary age. We held their attention for about twenty minutes. Then they ran off to play and the adults were much more fascinated with the show. A few teens showed up later, and they stuck around too. One or two of them asked some pretty good questions, and I learned that one was planning to major in chemistry. He had a lot of questions about fusion in stars and such, and was a great student for us.

We showed them...Saturn, M42, M35, NGC 3242, M45, M44, Mizar and Alcor, and probably at least one or two others. Sky was clear, transparent, and I thought it was pretty steady too by 9:00 or so. It is dark at that park.